


Red Dawn

by Nymm_at_Night



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: As in they literally go curtain shopping, Crushes, Curtain Fic, Daddy Issues, Domestic, Friendship, Hand Jobs, IKEA, Illustrated, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Multi, No infidelity! I promise!, On the side - Freeform, Other, Past Abuse, Platonic Sex, Trauma, Two henchmen have a night on the town, irresponsible use of a penis, meremine - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 05:54:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16341041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nymm_at_Night/pseuds/Nymm_at_Night
Summary: Rich teaches Jeremy about caring for burn wounds, interior decorating and social economics. Jeremy is a fast learner.





	Red Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to meg, tyxeros and bird for editing. I ain't dead yet.

The red taillights of the bus burn in the winter fog. Rich watches them disappear down the road and shakes his head. He has to get moving. 

Jeremy lives in the most generic neighborhood Rich has ever seen. Beige kit houses erupt from the earth like row of teeth, siding peeling at the edges. Gleaming cars sit next to crumpled mailboxes, victims of snowplow slaughter. The whole neighborhood is strung out between the ostentatious wealth of suburban living and Rich’s shithole, leaving it utterly unmemorable.

Rich pulls Jake’s coat tighter around him, pinching the feathers sticking out of the seams. He gave it to him last Christmas, but it’s still his. The thick down filling helps to buffer the cold. Jake always gave the best presents, and only partly because he can afford them.

Rich frowns and turns down a side street, scanning the lawns for... something. Jeremy might live in a nicer part of town, but Rich can still feel eyes on him in the dark. There’s no voice in his ear to promise safety and to push out the pain, just the sodium glow of streetlights and his own paranoia. 

He grimaces and scratches at his leg through his jeans. It does nothing to dull the pain gripping at his flesh, the bandages digging into his skin. The hurt’s too deep. The fire’s moved below his skin like a coal mine set alight. His bones are embers.

The handle of his pocket knife digs into the palm of his hand, making the cuts on it flare with pain. He hates this. If something happened, if he had to run, that’d be the end of it. 

Jeremy’s house stands out from the others on the street, if only for its failings. The bush in front is overgrown, its snow-bowed branches covering an entire window. The other one stares out from its crumbling frame, empty. Jeremy’s mother had taken the curtains on the way out. No one had bothered to buy replacements.

Rich slips into the house’s shadow, skulking around to the back where the neighbors can’t watch. The maple tree outside Jeremy’s room is as sturdy as ever. 

Rich rubs his hands together and grabs for the lowest branch. He cringes away as his shoulder screams in protest, and slips a hand under the coat to check the bandage. The skin throbs, but the gauze hasn’t slipped loose. 

Rich grits his teeth and takes it at run, tries to hook his leg around the bough. He falls and his shoulder hits the packed snow hard. Rich tastes metal in his mouth- a bleeding tongue- and bites into the sleeve of Jake’s jacket, stifling a scream, then screams for real because there’s no one to shut him up.

Rich glares up at the black sky and hates.

“Rich?” The porch door cracks open, and Rich groans and looks over to see Jeremy hopping down the steps in sweatpants and a sweater. “What are you doing here?”

Rich wrinkles his nose and stares at the empty sky above. “Got released early. Dad’s a fucking asshole. I’m sleeping here.”

Jeremy’s face softens and he holds out a hand. “Did something happen?”

Rich takes it and sets his feet apart in the snow to keep himself from swaying too much. “I’m fine.”

Jeremy winces and stops, looking at his hand. “Did you just… bleed on me?”

“You lost the right to worry about blood borne illness the second you started chugging drugs outta a Payless.”

“If you were going to give me syphilis or something, it’d already have happened, I guess.” Jeremy sighs and starts dragging Rich towards the warm glow of the porch. “Jesus Christ dude.”

He lets go of Rich’s wrist to force the creaky sliding door open, and Rich follows him in. The warm air buffets his face and Rich sucks in a long breath, letting it chase out the cold that’s seeped into his lungs. 

Jeremy shakes his head and steps into the kitchen, maneuvering through stacks of cardboard boxes and full trash bags. Rich doesn’t remember those from the last time he visited, but the fact that the counters are clean is a bigger shock. For the first time he can remember, they’re free of pizza and take out boxes waiting to be recycled. On the stove a pot with a mismatched lid bubbles away. It smells like soy sauce and frozen peas. “What happened this time?”

“What do you mean ‘this time?’” Rich says, picking at the lint collecting on the coat.

“Look, I know it was during... the SQUIP,” Jeremy says, dropping his voice reflexively, “but the only difference between me waking up to you crashing on my floor and this is that I’m awake when you showed up.” 

Jeremy shoves Rich’s hand under the sink faucet and turns on the water. Rich glares at it half heartedly, but Jeremy’s face refuses to be irritating. Jeremy’s a piece of shit like that. “So?”

“Rich, what did he do?” Jeremy says quietly, rubbing some dish soap into Rich’s cuts. He always motherhens when he’s worried, doubly so when Christine and Michael aren’t around for him to work his tender mercies on.

Rich shakes his hand free and sticks it in his pocket. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Rich, what am I supposed to do,” Jeremy half-laughs, running a hand through his hair. “I mean, it’s eight o’clock, you show up looking like... looking like-”

“You can just say I look like shit,” Rich says, leaning against the counter. “I just got out of a burn unit, it’s not exactly news.”

“Have you ever considered I don’t want to tell you you look like shit?” Jeremy asks, stretching to grab a bowl out of the cupboard. “Do you want some soup?”

Rich nods and drapes himself over the counter as melodramatically as possible. “But Jeremy,” Rich says, putting on his best Kermit impression. “The people who love you are honest with you!”

Jeremy laughs in spite of himself in that ugly, wheezing way of his and Rich smirks. “Jeremy, it’s not easy being a pathetic excuse for a human being.”

“God, I can’t believe it’s been two months. Sometimes it feels like its been years, and then the next moment it’s like I’m just waking up again.” Jeremy sighs, running his hands down his face, then remembers who he’s talking to. “Sorry. I mean, it’s got to be worse for you-”

“It’s quiet,” Rich says, reaching for the ladle on the stove top. “Real fucking quiet.”

Jeremy nods and vanishes into the other room while Rich spoons more noodles into his bowl. It’s not the first time he and Jeremy have slurped down a bowl full of shitty ramen together, but the chicken and vegetables floating in it are definitely new. It’s almost like someone cares about nutrition or something.

“Here.” Jeremy returns brandishing a stool and sets it up next to the old radiator in the corner. “I’ve got some hot sauce if you want it.”

“You’re spoiling me. If you keep this up, I’ll end up getting all uppity,” Rich says, letting Jeremy push him onto the chair. He holds the bowl close. The porcelain is warm under his fingers and he takes a long sip of the broth. “You’re burning the the rainbow connection, dipshit.”

“I’ll live,” Jeremy says, pouring some extra broth into his bowl and sitting on the counter across from Rich. They eat in silence, Jeremy poking through his noodles for bits of meat and vegetables like a bird. 

Rich finishes his long before Jeremy, and sets it on his legs, watching the broth and tiny bits of noodle swirl around the bottom of the bowl. It’s calming in a weird way, like watching a lava lamp or one of those weird-ass videos Christine likes to stare at. Rich leans against the radiator and shuts his eyes, letting the warmth wash over him and sooth his aching legs. 

It’s okay. Jeremy’s keeping watch.

There’s the slap of bare feet on hardwood and Rich jerks awake, nearly spilling soup on his lap He fights the urge to bolt and glares up at Jeremy’s dad.

Mr. Heere sticks his thumbs in the belt loops of his pants like he’s in a shitty school portrait and looks between Jeremy and Rich like they’ve grown two heads. “I didn’t know you were having your friend over tonight, private.”

Jeremy shrugs helplessly. “Neither did I. Rich kinda goes where he wants. Like, uh, a cat.”

Rich makes prolonged, direct eye contact with Mr. Heere as he lifts the bowl to his lips and slurps the soup as loud as physically possible. Mr. Heere looks like the very association of Rich and cats suddenly ruined anything feline forever. Rich rolls his eyes. He doesn’t know why he looks so shocked. It wasn’t like Rich wasn’t sneaking in and out of Jeremy’s house constantly before. It’s Mr. Heere’s own fault he spent more time sitting on his fat ass than he did actually paying attention to his own son.

And now, after Michael ran in and saved the day, here he is, ready to swoop in and act like Jeremy is suddenly worth the effort of getting off the fucking couch. Rich licks the inside and outside of the bowl, scowling at Mr. Heere.

“Rich?” Mr. Heere raises his eyebrows at Jeremy. “Isn’t he the boy who-”

“Yeah, I’m his fucking mail order bride, shipped directly out of Bosnia.” Rich sticks a pinkie in the bowl to wipe up the last piece of noodle. “Cost him a whole four hundred bucks.”

“Seriously?” Jeremy sighs and runs his fingers through his bangs, pushing them behind his ear. “Dad, Rich, please.”

Rich stands, knees shaking like he’s a inbred Chihuahua or some shit, and dumps the bowl in the kitchen sink. He stands as tall as he can in front of Heere and grins wide enough he can feel his scars twist. Bats his eyes. Puffs out his chest the way it always told him to. “What, can’t a guy take his bro out to Ikea? Get him some sweet Swedish balls?”

Mr. Heere glances over to Jeremy, brow wrinkled. “You’re going to Ikea?”

“We are?” Jeremy shrugs. “I guess?”

Rich hides his wince as he stretches and leans against their chipped counter. “‘Course we are. You need new curtains, Jere-bear.”

Jeremy rolls his eyes. Mr. Heere looks between the two of them, cow-eyed. “I do?”

“Anyone could look into your house,” Rich says casually, flipping on the sink and grabbing a sponge. “Anyone.”

“Rich, knock it off.” Jeremy gives an apologetic smile to Mr. Heere and slips off the counter. “Sorry. Can I borrow the car?”

Mr. Heere looks between Rich’s placid grin and Jeremy’s twitching fingers, and sighs, rubbing at his temples. “I guess we do need new curtains.”

Jeremy whoops and goes in for a high five while Mr. Heere tries for a hug. Rich glares at the awkward collision of paternal affection and throws the bowl in the drying rack.

Jeremy eventually squirms out of the parental death grip, the tips of his ears flushed red. Mr. Heere drops the keys in his outstretched hands and digs in his pocket for a minute until his fat fingers find his wallet. “Private, if you think we need anything else-”

“Dad.” Jeremy bounces on the balls of his feet as his dad licks his fingers to take out a few bills. He holds them in the way everyone does when they don’t want you to see the number on them. “I took my meds, I’ll be fine.”

Mr. Heere gives him that stupid look teachers always give when they’re concerned about your home life, which is fucking dumb considering that he is Jeremy’s home life. “Son, I just want you to know that if you want- if you need anything, I don’t mind.”

“Dad. I’m fine.” 

“I’m just letting you know.” Mr. Heere sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “If there’s anything you want to talk about-”

“I’m fine, okay? I can go to the freaking store without causing an apocalypse!” Jeremy snaps. He’s spazzing out. Rich isn’t sure if he knows he’s doing it, but he looks away anyways. Jeremy’s got enough people gawking at him like a fish.

There’s another moment of silence before Jeremy relents, his shoulders slumping. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, just not now, okay? When we get back, alright?”

Rich stares at last year’s calendar on the wall, ignoring the yelp as Mr. Heere ruffles Jeremy’s hair or some bullshit. He waits to turn back around until Mr. Heere’s meandered off to do whatever he does when he’s not awkwardly third wheeling or side eying Rich.

“Ugh. Dads,” Jeremy groans when he’s left, but his heart isn’t really in it. Rich follows him back to the porch, watching him pull on his sneakers and jacket. “Is IKEA even open?”

Rich rolls his eyes and picks at his knuckles. “Do you care if it is?”

Jeremy pauses in the middle of tying his clunky blue Doc Martens. “We’re not breaking into IKEA.”

“Not really what I meant, ganglefuck.”

Jeremy finishes double knotting his shoes and straightens, biting his lip. “I… I guess we do need new curtains. It’s one less thing for Dad to worry about.”

He unclicks the door and slides it open, stepping out into the cold night. Rich follows him, stubbornly jumping off the steps instead of walking. Pain crackles up his knees. He grits his teeth and ignores it. “I’m pretty sure making sure pedophiles can’t stare into your house is his job.”

“Gross, dude.” Jeremy huffs, his breath fogging in the cold air. “Could you not antagonize my dad every time you see him? He’s trying.”

“Oh, but it’s the only thing I’m good at.” Rich grins wide enough to show his silver-capped molars. “I just see a father figure and I can’t help it.”

Jeremy looks unimpressed.

“Christ, fine, I’ll shut my trap.” Rich slings an arm over Jeremy’s shoulders as they stalk towards the car. “What, can’t a guy look out for his co-henchmen?”

“Ex-co-henchmen,” Jeremy corrects, leaning against Mr. Heere’s painfully middle aged and middle classed sedan. It’s a car with the soul of being too lazy to have a mid-life crisis and passing out in front of the TV to World War Two documentaries. For all the faults of Michael’s horrendous, shit-colored PT Cruiser, it at least has character. It means something. “Or minions. I’m not sure what the difference is.”

“The difference is that I ain’t a fucking yellow tampon.” Rich laughs. “Bitch, you’re fucking Iago.”

Jeremy frowns and unlocks the car doors, clambering into the driver's seat as Rich takes shotgun. For once, Rich is glad that they’re taking the Heere’s vehicle of despair. It saves him the fucking humiliation of having to explain being barred from driving until the doctors feel safe with him behind the wheel of a several thousand pound pile of metal. 

Pussies.

“I don’t know.” Jeremy guns the engine and tucks his bangs behind his ear from where they’ve fallen loose. His hair’s grown out since Rich saw him in the hospital. It suits his face more than the harsh work of medical clippers. “I think we’re like- shit, who were the stepsisters in Cinderella? Anastasia and Drizella, yeah. That’s us.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? I was talking Shakespeare.”

Jeremy rolls his eyes and turns on the radio, letting the music play so softly it’s nothing more than white noise. “You spent the entire movie cackling at the slapstick.”

Rich rolls his eyes at the yellow lines on the road leading them away from here. “Fuck you, they had me more doped than a lab rat. I would have laughed at paint drying if it was on VHS.”

“Whatever you say,” Jeremy says, flicking his high beams off as they turn onto the main roads. “You’re basically Anastasia.”

“Why am I the ginger one?”

Jeremy huffs. “She had a redemption arc in the sequels! Drizella didn’t, she was just mean. So you’re Anastasia.”

Rich rolls his eyes and Jeremy is silent for as they wait for the light to turn. When the car doesn’t move for the first minute it’s green, Rich looks over to see Jeremy worrying his lip, eyes empty. “Dude.”

Jeremy hits the gas and shakes his head, coming back to himself. “Sorry. I zoned out. Anyways, Anastasia didn’t know any better. She was raised to be a jerk. It wasn’t her fault. When she got the chance she was a good person.”

Rich stares at him, slack jawed for a long moment. His throat feels tight, like he’s choking on smoke. Jeremy glances back at him and gently puts his hand on Rich’s forearm. 

The street lights flick by and Rich can’t see them, only the nervous look in Jeremy’s eyes, the way he clutches Rich’s coat. It’s quiet, like everytime the SQUIP kept them from saying the words that would fix everything.

Rich swallows and massages his throat. The skin feels rough even though the burns have long since closed up. “Are you fucking psychoanalyzing me with fucking  _ Cinderella III _ ? Seriously?”

Jeremy shrugs, frowning. “I thought it made sense.”

“It made sense, what doesn’t is you acting like Michael fucking Mell.” Rich snorts and scratches through his jacket at his scars. “Christ, apparently being a massive schmaltz is sexually transmitted. Didn’t you get your fucking gardasil shot?”

“Fuck off.” Jeremy lets go of Rich’s arm and turns back to the road, glaring. “It’s not like that.”

Rich waits for Jeremy to say something else, laugh or find a good come back. Jeremy sometimes has trouble with words or his tongue or both. Nothing comes, and Jeremy turns onto the highway in silence, turning off his clicker as they merge into the almost empty lanes.

Rich looks at his white knuckled grip on the steering wheel and feels something in himself crumple. He always has to push things, just because Jeremy won’t slap him or shove a cattle prod up his ass.  

“I’m sorry.”

“Michael’s my best friend. Don’t act like he’s a piece of shit or something, at least around me.”

“Fuck,” Rich runs his fingers through his hair, like that’ll stir up the thoughts in his thick skull and make them assemble themselves into words. “Fuck that’s not what I meant.”

Jeremy’s mouth is a hard, thin line.

“Michael’s a good guy,” Rich says. He’s the sort of guy Rich could have been if he wasn’t such a pathetic pushover. “It’s not bad you’re doing the fucking friendship speech thing, just fucking weird.”

Jeremy’s grip on the wheel eases and he lets out a long breath. “I know, I know. Just bad memories.”

Rich nods sympathetically and tries not to let the guilt drag him down. “You never told me if you were dating or not.”

“We’re not.”

Rich shifts uncomfortably in his seat, crossing and uncrossing his legs and trying to find a position that doesn’t make his feet feel like pins and needles. “Do you want to?”

Jeremy swallows tightly and doesn’t say anything, just dials up the music. Rich nods and lets the conversation die, just listening to the hum of the music as the exits flick by. He hasn’t had the chance to sit in anyone’s shotgun seat, just watching the trees move by in the dark, since Halloween.

He deserves that. Rich’s stupid stunt burned down Jake’s house and ruined his legs and now he can’t even walk without braces, let alone drive.

Rich grits his teeth and glares at a piece of road kill as it sweeps by, red and wet in the high beams before it fades into the night. His arm itches. He digs his nails into it through the jacket.

“Rich?” Jeremy’s looking at him again. “Do you want to swing by a convenience store?”

Rich guiltily pulls his hand away, flexing his fingers to push out the pain. “What?”

Jeremy shrugs and pulls into the right-most lane, easily pulling off the highway and onto the exit ramp. “There’s one next to the IKEA. We could get snacks.”

“Didn’t you just stuff food in my face?” 

“Soup’s not a snack,” Jeremy says with the sort of finality that says he’s had this conversation before. “I sort of want junk food though. Do you want to just wait in the car?”

Rich pulls a face. “I’m not a screaming toddler that you can leave in the backseat. I’m coming.”

Jeremy smiles as he flicks the turn signal and heads towards downtown.

IKEA looks like God dropped a massive shoebox on the earth. It towers above the New Jersey skyline, its tall neon letters announcing to the peons a promise of low quality, low prices and aggressive Swedishness.

Jeremy takes a sharp left, rolls into the convenience store’s lot, and parks under a lamp-post. He flicks the key out of the ignition and and the radio dwindles and dies, leaving them with the noise of late night traffic and the hum of neon lights.

Jeremy clambers out of the car and waits patiently for Rich to follow, leaning against the door as he fumbles with the stubborn seatbelt clasp. Eventually he forces his stupid fingers around it and frees himself. His skull is buzzing as he slams the door shut.

Jeremy walks over to Rich and offers his arm.

“I’m not your fucking grandpa,” Rich grumbles and links their arms together.

Jeremy shrugs. “He would deck me if I tried to walk him across the road.”

“Good for you.” The SQUIP would sooner shove a magnet up its ass than see its two meat puppets drop careful facade of dude-bro douchebaggery. The homoeroticism is just the icing on the cake.

The Cumberland Farms’ greenish fluorescent lights cast their gaze over acres of pre packaged baked goods and tasteless looking fruit straight from in underfunded school lunches. Rich licks his lips, tasting the preservatives and freezer burn on the back of his tongue.

Jeremy pulls him over to the snack aisle and untangles their arms so he can poke through the bags of candy and gum and sugar properly. Rich leans against the sunglasses display and makes direct eye contact with the security camera. The clerk looks about ready to call the cops.

Rich curls his lip, baring his teeth. He hasn’t shoplifted anything in ages.

“Rich, what do you want?”

“What?” Rich glances down at Jeremy, who’s apparently taken an interest in philosophy. “Like, as in Maslow's hierarchy of needs?”

Jeremy rolls his eyes. “I mean snacks. What do you want?”

Rich casts his eyes over the empty aisle, with its technicolor bags and boxes advertising sugars and fat. He picks the safest choice, plucking a black and red baggie from the end of the row.

Jeremy takes it, the plastic crinkling softly in his hands. “Jerky?”

“Yeah, so?” Rich stares at the bag of dried meat so he doesn’t have to look at anything else.

Jeremy bounces on his heels. “Nothing. It’s just,” He swallows and scratches the back of his neck. “I’ve never seen you actually look like you want to eat those.”

“Since when do I want to do anything?”

“You wanted to go to Ikea.”

“Barely.”

“Okay, fine.” Jeremy throws the hand not juggling a pack of Oreos in the air. “You never want to do anything ever again and you want to spend your days decomposing into the Earth.”

“That’s the plan, yeah.”

Jeremy sighs like a man waiting for a puddle to erode a sandbar. “Usually I can tell when you don’t not want to do anything.”

“It’s your special talent,” Rich drawls, scratching at his palms and avoiding Jeremy’s eyes. The sincerity makes him itch. “You should get a horse tramp stamp for it.”

“We both know they’re called Cutie Marks, Rich.” Jeremy shakes his head, pulling himself back onto whatever lesson of the day he’s decided to impart. “I ate- it made me eat all this health food and protein paste instead of stuff I actually liked. I really hate whey protein, for the record.”

Rich squeezes the skin of his wrist and lets go, watching it go white then red. “Maybe I just fucking like jerky.”

Jeremy’s shoulders slump. “I mean, you can like jerky. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“What are you talking about?”

Jeremy gives him a look and Rich knows the battle is lost. They both know he’s deflecting.

“Rich, what’s your favorite candy?”

Rich wants to snap that it’s- Skittles- Mars Bars- Snickers- Life Savers- whatever the person in front of him likes- but Jeremy’s the only person left to impress. There’s no voice to tell him what to say and dull the jagged edges of the holes in his head. It’s gone, gone like everyone else who was supposed to care.

Jeremy doesn’t stare while he waits for Rich to speak, just slides the jerky back onto the shelf. Jake was always content to let these things pass, smooth over the glitching, twitchy spaces in his persona with a laugh and a comforting slap on the back. Jake was always good at making things normal again.

Jake would let a wound heal around the knife. Jeremy never seems content to leave it in.

Rich wipes his hand down his face. Emotions with Jeremy feel like a cleansing purge, leaving everything wrong and twisted squirming at the bottom of a basin. His chest aches whenever he thinks about curling up next to Jake and forgetting. Hiding.

He needs this though. The number of people willing to put up with his bullshit is vanishingly small, and he’s already fucked over one of them. Rich swallows, bites his chapped lips, and forces himself to think back to reduced rate lunches and hand me down clothes. “I liked Swedish Fish.”

It feels like a confessional, but the smile on Jeremy’s face is worth it. “It’s a good place to start.”

The bitter part of Rich wants to scream that there’s no place to start when it comes to rebuilding a personality, but he swallows it. “Are we getting milk?”

Jeremy blinks slowly at him. “Why would we need milk?”

“You’ve got an entire bag of Oreos. Were you just going to eat them straight?”

“I wasn’t going to eat the whole bag!”

“Okay, this is the part where you stop playing armchair therapist and start buying milk,” Rich announces, dragging Jeremy over to the freezer by his arm. “Pick, stringbean.”

“I’m not trying to psychoanalyze you!” Jeremy says, pulling a pint out of the fridge. “Uh, two percent or whole?”

“Whole milk. You’re already stuffing me with sugar anyways.”

Jeremy rolls his eyes, trades the jugs, and presses the glass door closed with his shoulder. “Christine says the junk food’s good for the soul.”

“Christine says a lot of shit and about half of it is theater quotes.”

Jeremy opens his mouth to argue, then accepts the truth and shuts it. “Are you going to help with the musical?”

Rich raises an eyebrow at him as he sets their food down on the counter. So much for intimidating the cashier. “I’ve spent enough of my life batting my lashes and singing about how daddy didn’t love me. I ain’t going on stage.”

Jeremy shrugs, fishing his wallet out of his pocket and pulling out a ten. “Auditions are over anyways, but you could work tech.”

“Jeremy, I’m not gonna lug your shit around stage. In case you haven’t noticed I’ve got the constitution of a piece of pancetta.”

“You could do costumes,” Jeremy says lamely. The cashier coughs and Jeremy scrambles to give him the money.

“We have enough of a budget for costumes?”

“It’s a lot of construction paper and glitter glue.”

“Art therapy, my favorite,” Rich deadpans. “What play is it?”

“The Color Purple?” Jeremy slings the bag of snacks over his shoulder, the bright red “THANK YOU” smushed against his wool jacket. “It’s a musical about an African-American lady in like, the 1900s?”

“Jesus damn, I love The Color Purple.”

Jeremy drops the change all over the floor, sending dimes and nickels ringing across the tile. Jeremy stammers an apology and drops to his knees to weasel them out from under the counter. “S-sorry. But uh, seriously?”

Rich nods, scooping loose change off the ground and handing the coins to Jeremy. “Yeah. They had it in the hospital. I read it a couple times.”

“I saw you reading  _ Beloved _ in September. Was it good?”

Rich remembers the SQUIP chastising him as he downed Dad’s beer, snatching the book, and settling in the corner of his room. He traced his fingers over Sethe slitting her daughter’s throat and stole her courage for himself. 

Rich grins and offers Jeremy his arm. “It was what I needed.”

They step out of the convenience store, the cold wind blowing through their hair. The night tastes like the grease fat from the McDonalds across the street and nicotine smoke on the man loitering in front of the liquor shop next door. 

Jeremy catches Rich’s gaze and stops. “We could get beer or something. It’d hate that.”

“It always chewed me out for it. Always going on about how disappointed it was.” Rich makes a face at the flickering neon sign. “I still have my fake ID.”

“Would we even need it?” Jeremy asks, staring distantly at the parking lot. It’s empty and quiet, save the for the quiet skitter of a plastic soda cup across the asphalt. A plastic bag rolls like an urban tumbleweed and catches on a lamp post. “I can- I think I could sell an igloo snow at this point.”

“We could just walk in. Get beer,” Rich repeats. He can practically taste the acrid bite of alcohol on his tongue, the miasma of it thick in his lungs, the spilled bottles leaching into the couch cushions. “How’s that for teenage rebellion?”

Jeremy’s finger twitch and jitter as he rubs his wrists. “It’d hate it. It’d be quiet.”

Rich doesn’t move for a solid minute. Neither does Jeremy, the artificial light framing him like a halogen halo.

“I think you’d like tech.” Jeremy’s walking again, and Rich falls into step with him like nothing happened. Because it didn’t. “Brooke’s whipping the stage crew into shape, but uh, you’d be working with Chloe on costumes. She’s sick to death of cutting out elf ears, so that’s good.”

“What.”

Jeremy shrugs sheepishly, kicking at the faded lines of the parking spaces. “We got insurance money from the fall play, but nobody knows we even have a theater. Mr. Reyes thought…”

He trails off, tearing open the Oreos in the silence.

Rich narrows his eyes. “Jeremy.”

Jeremy crinkles the package nervously. “Yes?”

“What exactly did Mr. Reyes think.”

“Well,” Jeremy says, drawing the Ls into their own syllable. Rich clutches his arm in a death grip until Jeremy huffs and tries to shake him off. It devolves into a brief scuffle until pain claws up Rich’s arm and Jeremy backs off.

Rich rubs his burning shoulder and hooks their arms back together. He gives Jeremy a very pointed look.

Jeremy sighs and nibbles off a corner of his Oreo. “Mr. Reyes thought that making it a story about elves and bigfoot would make it appeal more to the hip, youth target demographic.”

Rich feels death come for him. “He did what?!”

Jeremy rubs at the bridge of his nose. “Rich, our school’s so pasty white. It was this or like-” He groans, wiping his hand down his face. “God I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Oh, fucking great! Our drama teacher hasn’t stuck Madeline in shoe polish and a wig! Wow, we sure aren’t desecrating a masterpiece and disrespecting-” Rich throws his free hand in the air. Life lives to make him suffer. Fuck this. “Fucking elves? Really?!”

Jeremy shrugs helplessly, mouth full of Oreo and bullshit. “I don’t know! He said that’s what we're doing and Christine started yelling and now there are elves! And bigfoot!”

“Holy fucking shit.” Rich lets out a long breath through his clenched teeth. “Holy fucking shit! Why are you idiots even doing it then?”

“Rich.” Jeremy stops under the streetlamp, eyes crazed in the orange light. “I have seen this man make a sandwich with frozen hot pockets for bread. I don’t know. I just don’t.”

Rich sighes and tugs Jeremy towards the waiting maw of IKEA. “You realize I now have to join.”

“Yes.”

“Out of spite.”

“Yes.”

“I’m gonna fucking ruin your show”

“I’m conditioned to accept tragedy, Rich.”

The electric doors slide open (Hallå!) and Rich and Jeremy step into another plane of furniture based existence. The lobby is empty and the waiting area for the playscape is void of children. Jeremy pulls Rich away as he inches towards the ball pit and drags him to the escalator. “We’re- well, Christine and me- are staging a coup.”

Rich mounts the escalator to the second floor, posing like Rose on the fucking Titanic. Below them, the lobby display of faux fur rugs and unpronounceable couches becomes smaller and smaller. Jeremy leans over the edge to accommodate Rich’s outspread arms and side eyes the tired looking employee watching them ascend. “I want in.”

Jeremy’s face splits open in a grin. Rich could never miss school days spent plotting social espionage and how to suppress dissenters, but there’s still something nostalgic about that scheming look. “We’re learning  _ Avenue Q  _ cover to cover. Brooke’s taken up puppetry.”

“How the fuck are you guys going to get the orchestra in on this?”

“Who said we have an orchestra?” Jeremy fans his hands out in front of him, a visionary. “Nah, Michael’s just going to switch the karaoke tapes and hey, do you want to ride in the cart?”

Jeremy drags over nearest abandoned cart, rolling it back and forth occasionally. The wheels squeak shrilly on the bare cement floor.

“I mean, Christine likes riding in carts. Do you know the place where you put kids with the-” Jeremy mimes closing his seat belt. “She stands on them and writes nice things on ceiling fans sometimes.”

“You have dazzling taste in women,” Rich says, cackling as Jeremy goes pink. “Get in the fucking cart and convince me not to burn down the auditorium too.”

Jeremy scrambles into the cart, making the metal squeak, and leans against the side. He runs a hand through his hair. “Don’t even joke dude.”

Rich looks away. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

Rich shrugs, pushing the cart into the homegoods labyrinth, rolling his eyes as Jeremy makes kicks up his legs with all the extravagance of a theater kid mentored by a robot horny for aesthetics. “You know I’m not going anywhere, right?”

Jeremy shakes his head and sighs up at the unfinished ceiling. “Yeah. You’re not.”

“Fucking good. Now tell me about your girlfriend’s assassination plot.”

Jeremy sputters and goes red, and Rich shakes the cart until he stops freaking out and starts nattering about the finer details of Christine’s plan. 

The IKEA unfolds before them in a labyrinth of discount furniture. Rich longs for Theseus’s ball of string to save him from this vortex of  **VESKEN** and  **VITTSJO** , but there is no one to save them. The halls are completely empty, devoid even of employees. It’s like the winter woods at night, as cold and lifeless as the snow. The soft hum of early two-thousands music over the radio blips out a few minutes into their walk. 

“That’s ominous,” Jeremy says, cutting his description of Christine supplexing Mr. Reyes short. “Hey, couches.”

He jumps easily out of the car, strolling over to pick at a torn seam on the nearest sofa. Rich is privately grateful. His arms were starting to ache. “I think the orange is a bit much. It’s a bit too Fanta.”

Rich scans the tag on it and makes a coughed approximation of the umlaut hell that is the name of the product. “Careful, you’re projecting your virulent hatred of soda onto innocent furniture.”

Jeremy squeezes the armrest. “Hey, I like Fanta. Sometimes.”

Rich stares out at the fields of merchandise marketed mainly to desperate men and their weeping mothers. There are strange objects on shelves. Rich is not sure of their purpose. He doesn’t think anyone was ever meant to know.

Jeremy wanders over and picks one up, cradling it in his arms like a child. “Man you could kill a cat with this thing.”

Tentatively, Rich runs a hand over its surface. The villi of it are uncomfortably fleshy. “We should put this shit back.”

“It could look nice on a… desk? Or something?” 

Rich gives him a flat look.

Jeremy sighs and sets it down, wandering towards the bed frames. He pats one experimentally. “What do you think of this? It’s kinda got a brownish vibe to it.”

Rich gives the frame a good shake and listens to it rattle. He can hear screws rattle around in the metal tubes. “This is a piece of shit.”

Jeremy examines the metal headrest, running his fingers over the crest of it. “I’m not sure if I like the minimalist thing. Too… efficient.”

Rich checks the price tag and grimaces. “They want you to pay out your ass for this. Just get some new slats for yours or something.”

“My bed doesn’t need new slats,” Jeremy says, crossing his arms. “I need a new frame.”

“What the hell did you do to the old one?”

Jeremy looks away, shrugging. “What do you need to get?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, you’re the one who wanted to get something at IKEA. You did want to buy something, right?”

Rich pushes the cart through some short cut marked by untrustworthy looking arrows, and winces at the obnoxiously bright lighting showcase. It wasn’t necessary to outfit every fucking flat surface with Christmas tree lights, and yet IKEA has risen to the occasion just to fuck over Rich’s retinas. “Need a lamp.”

Jeremy looks up at the lights like he’s about to cream himself. “Look at this one!”

He runs over to a weird globe covered in seams and yanks the pull cord. The panels spring out and Jeremy grabs the other cord, pulling on them so the lamp pumps in and out like a heart. “Michael would love this! We could paint it up like the Death Star, and- and get some glow in the dark stars or something!”

The thing looks so cheaply made that Rich is sure that in a year it’ll be rotting at the bottom of a landfill, but Jeremy’s already hauling one into the cart, shoving the box in next to the rug. “You’re a regular  _ Queer Eye For The Straight Guy.” _

Jeremy scratches at the back of his neck. “I mean, it’s going to clash…”

“I need a desk lamp, dickbreath,” Rich shifts his weight and folds his arms, and grinds his teeth as pain shoots up his side. “You two have fun interior decorating and packing fudge.”

Jeremy looks between the lamp hanging in the display, the box, and Rich. “Maybe I should just put it back.”

He watches Jeremy pick through the lamps, frowning as he fiddles with the light shades and wires. The electronic clock displays fizzle and blink as he walks by. “How about this one? I like the color.”

“Too big.”

“This one has a remote?”

“Don’t trust that.”

“This lamp shade is nice?”

“Postmodernism ruined my life, Jeremy.”

Jeremy runs an exhausted hand down his face. “Well what do you want?”

“It has to be a desk lamp,” Rich repeats as Jeremy begins to slink off towards the chandeliers. “One and a half feet tall, blue lamp shade, bronze base. As little glass on it as possible.”

Jeremy frowns and looks around at the displays. “Rich, I don’t know if they have something like that.”

“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do? We need a new one.” Rich grits his teeth and stalks over to one of the columns. He leans against it, the little shelf for shopping lists and shitty pencils digging into his back. His knees are aching again in some kind of miserable chain reaction. It feels like rusted metal grating against itself. “The bastard’s gonna wake up tomorrow morning and not even remember throwing the fucking thing.”

Jeremy lets go of the cart, letting it drift down the aisle and park by one of the troughs of stuffed animals. “Are you okay?”

Rich growls, torn between choking out a snide comment or suffering in silence. Jeremy frowns and reaches down to take Rich’s hand, gently pulling it away from where he’s been scratching into his forearm. Rich flinches, half expecting Jeremy to give some kinda passive aggressive bullshit about the blood beading up on the scratches, but Jeremy just pulls in closer and squeezes his hand. 

After a long moment, Jeremy lets go, leaning next to Rich. “How are your meds working? They’ve got you on opioids, right?”

“Yeah. They’re fine.” Rich shifts against the wall, trying to ignore the dull throb where the shitty shelf presses against his dressings. “How are yours?”

Jeremy shrugs. Rich narrows his eyes. “You are taking them, right?”

“Yes I’m taking them!” Jeremy runs his hand through his hair then methodically prods his bangs back into place as he talks. “Christ, every fucking evening. I’m pretty sure Michael’s sick of me calling him every night.”

“Dude, it’s Michael. I’m pretty sure he yips and runs around in circles every time you call. Tail wags a mile a minute.”

He waggled his eyebrows and Jeremy groans. “I hate you. Stupid horse pills.”

“They suck dick, but tough shit.” Rich jabs his free hand into Jeremy’s chest. “ I ain’t seeing you clawing at the walls again.”

Jeremy nods and Rich shifts his hand until he’s holding Jeremy’s properly. It takes a moment, but Jeremy squeezes back. “Are they helping?”

Jeremy’s quiet for a long moment. “Is it weird that I hate admitting that they are?”

Rich hums lifts his hand to inspect his nails, dragging Jeremy’s with it. His are short and flat where Jeremy’s are thinner and done up in nail polish. Rich is positive he’s seen that shade on Christine. “I dunno. It is if you’re blaming yourself for needing them.”

“You sound like my therapist.”

“Well Jesus Christ kettle, how dare you say that? Are you fucking accusing me of being black?” Rich sighs and Jeremy snorts, his head lolling back against the column. “Wow, so insensitive.” 

“Asshole.”

“Bitch, you fucking deserve antidepressants that don’t tell you to slit your goddamn wrists.”

Jeremy puts up his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. How are you doing?” Rich scowls and Jeremy gently prods him with his elbow. “You never told me.”

“I’m fucking tired all the time. Shit hurts.” Rich looks away from Jeremy’s frown, digging his nails into the fabric of his jeans. “Quit looking at me like a kicked puppy. The drugs work. I’m moving around. That’s all you can ask for.”

Jeremy makes a face like a melting greyhound. “Does it hurt a lot right now?”

Rich swallows and stares at the shitty display rooms around them. “Walking to your house from the bus stop fucking killed my legs. I wanna fucking crash for the next week.”

Jeremy makes a sympathetic noise and Rich waves him off. “I’m fine, tallass. I can bitch when I don’t gotta carry the damn pills everywhere.”

“Rich…”

“I’m not a fucking addict.” Rich huffs, kicking his heel against the grey concrete floor. “Dad just won’t fucking stop digging through my shit. Constantly.” 

“Rich, that’s not okay,” Jeremy says, all furrowed brow and guidance-counselor-concern. “You shouldn’t have to deal with that.”

“Gee, no fucking shit,” Rich snarls, pushing off of the column so he can face Jeremy. “Wow Jeremy, it’s almost like I shouldn’t have to care if Dad gets himself a shiny new opioid addiction! Can’t fucking wait til I can call him a goddamn crack whore!”

“I don’t like- I hate- c’mon Rich. This isn’t right.” Jeremy catches Rich’s arm, holding tight. “I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fucking worried too, but custody is a bitch,” Rich snaps. “He’s my fucking dad. The bastard’s not going anywhere. So unless you can snap your fingers and cure alcoholism and whatever fucked up brain he gave me, then we’re all flat out of luck.”

Jeremy stares at the ground. Sets his jaw. Grips Rich’s arm tighter. “Then leave.”

“The SQUIP locked my bank account,” Rich growls. “You’ve seen the shit I have to eat, what I have to wear to school. I’d be sleeping under a fucking bridge.”

Jeremy shakes his head. “No, live with me. Crash on the couch, sleep in my room, I don’t care. I’m not going to make you stay with him.”

“Your dad hates my guts,” Rich says because it’s the only thing he can think of. 

“Not enough to leave you homeless,” Jeremy says, shifting from foot to foot. “You could stay with someone else. Christine, Jenna, Brooke- They’d let you crash.”

Rich tries to ignore how much it hurts that even Jeremy doesn’t include Jake in that list anymore. “I don’t need your pity.”

“This isn’t pity.” Jeremy doesn’t look away, just watches and waits. “Please.”

Rich clenches and unclenches his fists, tries to push past the lump in his throat. “Jeremy, I got a year left in this dump. I’m not fucking giving up.”

“Giving up on a what?” Jeremy asks. “What’s there to give up on? You hate your dad, you hate the house, you hate living there!”

“Easy for you to fucking say.” Rich waves his hands in the air, snarling at the cuts on his palms where the broken lightbulb dug into his skin. “It’s not like you had to work for anything!”

“What are you talking about?”

Rich makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “You sat around jerking it in your fucking house and suddenly bam, you’re fucking playing catch getting called sport and shit!”

“Rich, I got put in a coma!” Jeremy snaps. “He feels guilty!”

“I just got out of the fucking hospital with goddamn third degree burns and nobody's breaking out board games for me.” Rich bites back bile. “In case you didn’t notice, you killed the only thing that ever loved me.”

Jeremy’s face falls like a stack of bricks. “That’s not true. That wasn’t love.”

“We were its fucking world, and we killed it,” Rich spits. “And then while we were at it, I ruined every other person in a fifty mile radius.”

“You’re taking a lot of credit for this.”

“Bullshit. I know you two talk.” Rich curls his lip. “Jake’s probably told you exactly why he ditched me. You’re just too dumb or too nice to join him before I break your legs too.”

“I don’t care about Jake! This isn’t about him.” Jeremy waves a hand at the aisles around them. “I’m here because I want to be! Christine asked for you to help stage a theater coup because she wants to get to know you instead of some douchebag robot! Who cares if they’re gone, we’re here.”

He steps closer, sliding his hand down Rich’s arm to take his hand. “Rich, don’t sit around waiting for someone who won’t come back. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but you don’t owe them that.”

Rich’s eyes sting and he looks away. “Fine. I’ll think about it.”

“Thank you.”

Rich shrugs noncommittally and grimaces as his shoulders throb. Jeremy frowns and tugs at his hand, pulling him over towards one of the display rooms with its perfectly ordered desk and bookshelves. “C’mon.”

“I can’t fucking believe we just made a scene in a goddamn IKEA,” Rich grumbles as Jeremy pushes him into the children’s bunk bed. “What are we, a middle aged couple on the edge of divorce? Wow Debra, way to be a real bitch.”

“Why am I Debra?” Jeremy asks, sitting on the bed next to him. “Lie down.”

“Because you gotta face like a Debra. ‘Sides, I don’t need fucking nap time. I’m not five,” Rich says, wincing as he pulls his legs up.

“I guess,” Jeremy says, shuffling into the narrow space between the wall and Rich’s legs. “Then you can just wait here, laterally, while I read 500 pages of Reddit.”

Jeremy doesn’t even bother to pull out his phone, but Rich is too blitzed to give a fuck. Jeremy leans over him to pull the curtain over the bed shut, casting them into a comfortable, reddish semi darkness. He slowly lies down next to Rich like he’s a deer he’s gonna startle, and Rich grunts and scooches over to give him space.

Rich takes the excuse he’s been given and sleeps.

Rich wakes to darkness, pitch black without even the glow of light under a bedroom door. There’s something warm and heavy on his chest, and he shoves at it, sighing when he finds the curve of a jaw tucked into the crook of his neck. He runs his fingers over the face softly and yeah, that’s Jeremy alright. 

“Tallass, wake the fuck up.”

Jeremy groans and clings tighter, and Rich lets him for a solid five minutes because he’s a fucking pushover, just lying there with his hand in Jeremy’s hair. He has his arms shoved under the hem of Rich’s jacket. He’s warm.

Rich sighs and gently pats Jeremy’s cheek in the dark. “Dude, you gotta get up.”

Jeremy finally shifts, letting go of Rich’s shirt. “Rich?”

“Yeah, dipshit.” Rich slowly shifts his arm off Jeremy’s back, letting it flop onto the too soft mattress. “It’s me.”

“Did it turn off my eyes again?” Jeremy slurs sleepily. “Everything’s dark.”

Christ. “No. Michael shoved a Mountain Dew Red suppository up your ass and killed it. Your eyes are fine. It’s just dark.”

The mattress squeaks as Jeremy sits up, and there’s a loud, hallow thunk as his head collides with the top bunk bed.

“Shit!” Jeremy hisses in the dark and Rich listens to shifting fabric as he rummages in his pockets. “Are we still in IKEA?”

Rich hums and shuts his eyes. It’s weirdly calming here. If he ignores the distant noise of the interstate outside and the low hum of utilities, it’s like there’s nothing outside the confines of this bed, just two teenagers on a mattress in a black sea.

Then Jeremy finds his phone and turns on the flashlight. The world opens back up as he pulls open the curtain and shines it out into the store. It glints off the other showrooms, contorting each one into a twisted funhouse mirror of suburbia. 

Rich carefully slides off the twin bed. His sneakers are loud in the empty store, echoing over the distant hum of machinery and fans.

“Shit, it’s four in the morning already,” Jeremy says, pocketing his phone. “Christ.”

“Do you think they run the cameras at night?” Rich asks, setting off down the hall. He’s still stiff and tired, but adrenaline and sleep have taken the edge off the pain. “I don’t need more shit on my record.”

Jeremy nods, jogging to catch up. “I’d have to get close to one to check, sorry.”

Rich sighs. The side effects of being the central processing unit for a hivemind never seem to be useful when they need them. “Let’s just find the exit.”

Rich counts the lights glittering on the ceiling as they walk, trying to connect them into constellations. The warehouse ceiling is so high up he can barely tell it’s there save for the glint of fan blades up above. The entire store is lifeless and still, flat pallet boxes and plush toys staring at them with dead eyes. 

“Look, it’s Michael’s dream guy,” Rich whispers, pointing to a stuffed turtle with an overbite. Jeremy rolls his eyes like he isn’t horny for Michael’s gay Bowser fetish, and slips his hand into Rich’s. 

He squeezes back. Sometimes he doesn’t know if Jeremy does these things for Rich or himself. He wonders if it matters that some days they get out of bed just to see if the other’s still breathing. He wonders if that’ll ever go away.

It’s weird seeing the Ikea without the sad crowds of broke college students or people trying to decorate their pathetic bachelor pads. The cafeteria is the weirdest, with the chairs neatly stacked off to the side. The tables sit sad and destitute in the moonlight pouring through the huge window on the far wall. The soda machines gurgle softly at them as they walk past.

“Hey.” Jeremy nods his head at one of the machines. “I’m actually like, super thirsty? I think the employees took our milk jug.”

“Fine. I don’t need your morning breath in my life,” Rich complains as he tugs him over the fountain. 

Jeremy peels two paper cups off the stack left next to the machine and shoves them under the tap. He presses his hand to its casing and furrows his brow, and Rich waits for the machine to start. After a moment of waiting and watching Jeremy squirm, he sighs and touches his fingers to the back of it.

Rich hates this. Hates the way he can feel the circuitry in his head, laid out in layered diagrams and programs, equations without solutions, questions without answers, checksums and variables all the way down. It feels like someone’s pouring themself into his skull. He doesn’t know how Jeremy can deal with the electrical grid in his head every time he’s too lazy to turn out the lights, but just this once Rich can deal.

The machine hums cheerfully to life, and Jeremy smiles at it and fills their cups. Rich debates sitting on one of the tables but decides against it. The structural stability of anything in IKEA is suspect. 

Rich takes his cup and walks over the window, juggling it as he wipes away a patch of condensation with his sleeve.  Jeremy pushes a table out of the way so they can sit right up against it, looking out at the suburban sprawl below. The lights in the parking lot are flickering out one by one. If he tilts his head right he can see the distant glow of the Menlo Park Mall. 

“Do you see that cluster of orange lights? Right there to the east?” Jeremy asks, setting his drink down. “That’s where Christine lives.”

Rich squints his eyes, trying to track where Jeremy’s pointing. There’s nothing but roads dotted with street lamps branching out from New York like veins, but he still nods to the aorta of the Turnpike like he understands him. 

Jeremy moves his finger a fraction of an inch. “And there’s Michael. Just a few blocks from me over… there.”

“Jeremy, I know where Michael lives,” Rich complains, waving his straw at the window and flicking droplets of water onto the glass. “How else would I fuck his mom?”

Jeremy’s brow furrows in consternation. “Which one?”

“Both.”

Jeremy groans and flops back on the cold tile. “We’re going to Goodwill tomorrow. The three of us, I mean.”

Rich waits for him to add something to that, but Jeremy just stares at the ceiling and plays with his hands. He nudges Jeremy with the heel of his boot. “Yeah?”

“Huh?” Jeremy shifts slightly. “I mean we’re just buying some stuff.”

Rich pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “Look, I really shouldn’t have to tell you not to buy condoms at Goodwill, bitch.”

Jeremy scrambles upright like a spider on meth. “What?!”

“Seriously, what is going on with you three?” Rich leans on his elbows and gives Jeremy his best moderately-intimidating frown. “I was hoping by the time I stopped getting catheters shoved up my dick you’d have at least porked Michael. He looks like the slutty one.”

“Rich!” Jeremy shouts, waving his arms. “It’s not like that!”

“Okay then, quit playing coy and tell me what the fuck it’s like. I am not putting up with you goin’ ‘Oh, dearest Michael and Christine plan to take me antiquing on the morn!’ and then trying to weasel out of whatever gay shit you’ve gotten yourself stuck in.” Rich sits back, giving Jeremy a pointed look. “Tell your ex-co-henchmen what’s wrong. Let daddy Rich make it all better.”

Jeremy’s shoulders slump and looks away, always vulnerable to sentimentality. Rich watches him stare out at homes and families Rich has never known, and waits for him to give it up. 

“I… I like them both.” Jeremy’s voice cracks when he admits it. “Is- Is that weird?”

“You’re a pretty fucking weird dude in general.”

Jeremy looks entirely unconsoled. “So what am I supposed to do about it? Who wants a boyfriend who gets distracted whenever Michael shows his ankles.” Jeremy rubs his eyes and lets out a long breath. “They already think I cheated on Brooke. I’m going to go down as Class Slut in the yearbook.”

“Chloe would kill you before you took that from her,” Rich says, looking down at Jeremy. “Besides, you’re saying that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Okay, okay, promiscuity doesn’t make you a bad person! I get it!” Jeremy groans. “It’s not like I don’t hear that from my therapist every single week.”

“I don’t give a shit about what your therapist says.” Rich jabs his straw at Jeremy’s boobs. “You’re overthinking this. Just fuck them and get it over with already.”

Jeremy sputters. 

“Come on, use your fucking twink-wiles for some good,” Rich slaps his ass, and Jeremy skitters away, glaring at him from the otherside of a table. “Seriously, are you gonna let your anxiety shit keep you from getting a hot piece of ass? Just take ‘em to one of Jake’s parties, chug a few beers and drag them upstairs.”

“Sleeping with them isn’t going to make them like me.” 

“It’ll get your foot in the door.” Rich begins tearing his straw into little plastic strips. He remembers the way girls would bat their eyelashes at him, watch him across the cafeteria and bite their lips where the SQUIP kissed them the night before. It’d been efficient. “It’s reciprocity. Cost-benefit analysis. You gotta show them what you can offer before they’re ready to deal.”

Jeremy bites his lip. Rich sighs and claps him on the back. “Look. Fucking gets people attached. They stay around afterwards because sex means something to them. And besides, it’s not like you wouldn’t have fun.”

Jeremy gives Rich a long look and swallows tightly. He nods slowly. “I would. Have fun anyways, I mean.”

“See?” Rich smiles. “That’s the spirit.”

Jeremy glances at the window one last time and stands. “C’mon, Rich. Let’s get out of here.”

The exit isn’t too hard to find with Jeremy’s phone’s light and Rich’s utter apathy towards the idea of getting caught by the police. The warehouse shifts and settles in the dark. Jeremy draws closer every time the scaffolding creaks, slowly sneaking a hand around Rich’s arm.

The parking lot is dead. The Cumberland Farms across the street is the last man standing, surrounded by the dark windows of the liquor store and laundromat. Even the usual vagrants and loiterers are gone at this hour, off to shithole apartments and park benches for the night. Rich throws a final glance to the towering monolith behind them as they walk to the car. The IKEA sign glowers down at its trespassers.

Rich flips it off as Jeremy pulls out of the lot, turning out onto the empty streets. When the IKEA doesn’t return the gesture, he sighs, pressing his cheek against the window. “I fucking hate these pills sometimes. Can’t even drive.”

Jeremy hums in agreement. “It sucked when it had me drive while I was under. I always felt like I was going to crash us into a tree because I fell asleep.”

“It wouldn’t let you die,” Rich says, then pauses. “Wait, you got sedated?”

“You didn’t?”

Rich shakes his head. He watches the sky grow lighter as Jeremy drives home in silence.

Rich holds the storm door open for Jeremy as he fumbles with his keyring. Only one of the porch lights is working, and Jeremy keeps having to push his keychains out of the way, but he refuses to climb in through a window or worse, ring the doorbell.

The house is quiet and still, and Rich kicks his shoes off next to the door because it feels like it’s his responsibility to. Jeremy’s words crawl under his skin as he curls his socked toes in the carpet, watching him relock the door and wander off to the kitchen for a drink. 

Jeremy’s house was not a sanctuary. Nowhere was. Public spaces were only a respite until the party ended, his room only until Dad snapped the lock.

Rich leans against the coat closet door and if he would even know how to have this. A home. A family. Jeremy at least knew it once, but Rich never learned outside of an act.

“Do you want to do something?” Jeremy’s back, running his fingers around the rim of a mug of water. “My dad has Netflix, and Michael lent me the Gamecube.”

“Dude, it’s what?” Rich cranes his neck to see the clock, “Five A.M? Christine’s gonna gank me if you fall asleep on her and Headphones.”

Jeremy’s knuckles go white on the mug. Rich pretends not to notice. “Are you sure? We could hang out on the couch and you could tell me about-”

“Jeremy, go the fuck to sleep.”

He swallows, nods, and sets his mug down on the coffee table. Rich follows him up the stairs to his room, wincing at every creak of the floorboards. Old photos of Jeremy, his dad and a woman Rich has never met stare down from the walls. He looks happier in the old pictures, before high school and drugs and Rich. 

Jeremy pauses at the entrance to his room, pressing his hand to the solid oak. He reaches for the knob but flinches away. “Rich.”

Rich raises an eyebrow, but says nothing.

Jeremy’s shoulders are shaking. “Look, it’s not…” His adam’s apple bobs. The hand on the door makes a fist. He bows his head. “I’m sorry.”

Rich feels trapped, unable to comfort or ignore, frozen in place as Jeremy pushes the door open and steps inside. He follows in silence.

The SQUIP had them have sleepovers often, a bizarre combination of a LAN party, team building and emotional breakdowns. The point is, Rich has seen Jeremy’s room before- the military-made bed with its inoffensive sheets, the Super Shooter Sublimation poster plastered next to one with Eminem and the perfectly clean, never used desk in front of the window. Crisp, cool, and utterly sterile.

Now Jeremy’s room looks sterile in a whole new way. Less of a medically spayed way and more of a “ripped out the ovaries while disemboweling” way.

Everything’s gone. The desk, the posters, even the bed frame, leaving a mattress piled with mismatched comforters on the hardwood floor and a single potted aloe plant on the sill. The sharp blue of the walls has been painted over in stark primer. In the corner of room there’s an extra roll of painting tarp and tape.

Jeremy stops in the middle of it all, hands curled into fists at his sides. “I’m sorry. I’m uh, redecorating.”

Rich sits on the bed because that’s what he’s always done. Drawing attention to Jeremy’s minimalist identity crisis won’t help. “Why’re you sorry? S’not my room.”

Jeremy shrugs, staring at the floor. “Look I know- I know I asked you to live here and I know I can barely take care of myself, but Michael and Christine, they’re- we’re going to buy a bedframe and curtains and then it’ll be a real room again-”

“Dude.”

“I promise I’ll be better. Promise.”

“Jeremy, I don’t give a fuck.” Jeremy flinches, but Rich keeps going. “You’ve been to my house. Quit trying to impress me.”

“I’m sorry,” Jeremy says, hugging his arms and hunching in on himself. “I just… I couldn’t be here, looking at its- my old stuff. I just couldn’t.”

“I know,” Rich says, remembering the bile that rose into his throat when he stepped into his bedroom for the first time in a month, remembering his dad yelling through the walls, the lamp exploding on the wall behind his head. “I know.”

Jeremy nods and disappears off into the hall. Rich sighs and pulls off Jake’s coat, carefully folding it up and putting it on the ground by the mattress even though it makes his knees burn.

Jeremy comes back with a spare toothbrush in his hand for Rich. “I have some clothes left. Uh, we’re going to drop them off tomorrow, but they’re clean.”

Rich swallows the toothpaste and sets the toothbrush on the windowsill. “Hit me with your twink clothing.”

Jeremy rolls his eyes and sits, pulling one of the garbage bags in his closet into his lap and undoing the red ties. He digs around in there for long minute and throws a wad of fabric at Rich. “Those should fit.”

It’s an Eminem shirt and a pair of douchey sweatpants. Rich frowns at it. “SQUIP clothes?”

“Sorry! I can get you something else if you want-”

Rich puts a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder and some of the tension that’s been buzzing through him since they stepped into the room fades. “Get changed, tallass.”

Jeremy nods like a drinking bird and half-assedly pretends not to stare. There’s not much of a point. Once you’ve stolen a freshmen’s pants because your co-henchmen pissed himself in a seizure, stripping in front of him isn’t that big of a deal. Jeremy’s eyes dig into the red skin peeking out from Rich’s bandages and the slight paunch from weeks of bed rest. Rich lets his eyes slide down the curve of Jeremy’s spine, drinking in the moonlight outlining his waist and painting his scars white.

It’s still weird seeing them, no optic nerve blocking to help the SQUIP pretend that Jeremy was its golden boy that Rich forever failed to be. He wants to reach out and touch them.

“Are you okay?”

Rich blinks, realizing he’s standing around in nothing but his old jeans. “Yeah. Is that Michael’s shirt?”

It looks like a vintage tent on him. The stupid thing drops halfway down his thighs, like some kind of geek mumu. It’s hideous. It would make the SQUIP fry half his brain for being in the same room without burning it. Then it would electrocute Rich for letting Jeremy touch it and be infected by its toxic 90s grime.

It’s the best damn thing Rich’s ever seen him wear.

Jeremy smoothes out the creases in the graphic- “Winners Don’t Do Drugs!”, endorsed by Garfield in a backwards cap and holding a totally radical skateboard- and smiles a little, playing with the hem of the shirt. “Yeah. He and Christine lent me some stuff. Uh, until I get back on my feet or whatever.”

“Dude, that’s so fucking gay.” Jeremy snorts and ducks away as Rich tries to punch his shoulder. “I better fucking be invited to your threeway SoCal wedding.”

“We’re not even dating!”

“Yet!” Rich takes another swing, but it’s a feint. He hip checks Jeremy as he dodges, and Jeremy goes ass over tea kettle onto the mattress. “I’m going to fucking bring you a goddamn meat and cheese basket! And it’s going to all be fucking pork so you’ll be eating horseradish cheese while Michael and Christine slut it up with half a pound of prosciutto.”

Jeremy rolls his eyes and flops back on the bed. Rich turns away and unpins and untapes his dressings, strips off the bandage that locks his shoulder in a vice grip, and breathes his first free breath in forever. His grafts feel strange in the cool air, tender and numb in all the wrong places, and he wraps his arms around himself like turtle pulling into its shell. 

He shakes his head and grabs the tub of cream from Jake’s coat. Redoing the dressings is a process, one that’s not aided by his scars. The skin around his shoulder pulls tighter now, thick and leathery like rawhide. Rich struggles to get the cream onto his opposite side, grinding his teeth as he strains to reach it. 

“Here,” Jeremy says, taking the tub from him. “Let me.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.” Jeremy points to the mattress. “Lie down.”

Rich blinks, and Jeremy lovingly shoves him onto the bed. “C’mon dude. I want to.”

Rich nods, unsure of what exactly to make of that, and slowly lowers himself onto the mattress, wincing when he scrapes his wounds against it. The bed springs creak as Jeremy kneels over the small of his back, straddling him. 

Rich presses his face into the covers, listens to the sound of Jeremy spreading the goop on his fingers, and tries not to think too hard about exposed he feels. Jeremy could hook his fingers under his new skin and  _ shred _ , and Rich wouldn’t be able to stop him. 

But Jeremy is gentle. He has the same touch as the nurses in the hospital, like he’s afraid Rich will come apart at the seams if he presses too hard. Rich can’t bring himself to feel patronized. He wouldn’t take this from Jenna or Christine or anyone else, but Jeremy’s different. Jeremy’s always been different.

He starts from the pits and divots on his neck and works down his spine, paying special attention to graft stretching across his shoulder. Rich just focuses on not falling asleep before he can put the dressings back on.

Jeremy shifts slightly, inching back onto Rich’s ass. “Did it let you touch yourself?”

Rich is immediately wide awake. “What?”

Jeremy’s hands slow where they’re working on Rich’s shoulder. “Touch yourself. Get off. Mastur-”

“Jesus Christ, I know what it means,” Rich snaps, harsher than he wants to. He presses his cheek against the pillow and looks up at Jeremy. “Why’re you asking?”

“It… it didn’t let me.” Jeremy presses his fingers into the base of Rich’s spine, moving them in circles as he works out a knot. “It made me do push ups or shocked me instead. Did it do that for you?”

Rich shakes his head against the pillow and twists his fingers in the blankets. “It just threw college girls at me every couple weeks. I didn’t really give a shit. Fucking drug cocktail it had me on killed my libido or some crap.”

“So I guess it’s been a while, huh,” Jeremy trails his fingers down his spine, stilling just above the hem of Rich’s jeans, “for both of us.”

Rich feels his face go hot, touch dimmed down to where Jeremy’s fingers press into the small of his back. He suddenly feels impossibly heavy where he’s straddling him. “So?”

Jeremy is quiet for a long moment. Rich waits and hears him swallow. “We could... fix that.”

Rich twists around to stare up at Jeremy’s tomato-red face, pulled halfway between porno-seductress and about to clamber out of his own skin. “Get the gauze.”

Jeremy’s face falls and he grabs the spool of bandages, shimmying off of Rich’s legs and helping him sit up. He waves for Rich to raise his arms, and he does, letting Jeremy wrap his bad shoulder. 

“You’d already be in bed with Christine and Michael if you were this forward with them.”

Jeremy grimaces and reaches for the medical tape. “That’s different. You’re my friend.”

“They’re your friends too.”

Jeremy rolls his eyes. “But we’re _just_ friends.”

Rich checks the bandages and nods, because honestly, thank fuck. “Glad to know the feeling’s mutual.”

Jeremy nods. “It’d be just… guys being dudes?”

“You know, the joke’s that the guys are pretending to be straight,” Rich says, wincing as Jeremy accidently pokes one of his grafts. “I thought we ditched that shit with the fucking pill. You’ve spent too long drooling over Mell to go back in the closet.”

“If I was straight, do you really think I’d be asking to give you a handjob!?” Jeremy snaps, a little too loud. He winces as his voice rattles around the empty room, and deflates. “Forget it. It was a bad idea.”

“Why would you want to, anyways?” Rich runs a hand down his neck, tracing the red and bumpy places where his body sewed itself back together. “Just because we’re Faggoty Ann and Andy doesn’t make me look less like a fucking meatloaf.”

“You don’t!” Jeremy says immediately, predictably. He sighs, shoulders slumping. “I trust you, okay? I mean, for my first time since… my first time alone-” He shakes his head. “I want to do this with someone I trust.”

Rich blinks and looks back at Jeremy, at a loss for words. “You do?”

Jeremy nods, staring at the ground. “...Of course I do.”

“I ruined your life.”

“And I let you burn down a house,” Jeremy says, like that’s the end of it. For once, Rich wants to it to be. “So we’re even. And anyone who’d turn you down is either an idiot or gayer than Jenna.”

“Well. Shit,” Rich says, cupping Jeremy’s jaw. He can feel him tense under his fingers. He’s warm and alive. “You can’t expect me to say no to that.”

Kissing Jeremy is different. It’s not uncoordinated and bland like kissing drunk girls sober, or uncoordinated and terrifying like kissing drunk boys drunk, or going through the motions with the girlfriend of the week and counting down the days until he dumps her just to stir up cheap drama.

Jeremy tastes like toothpaste, not vodka, and kisses him slow and soft, like he’s afraid he’ll pull away at any minute. It’s not until Rich buries his fingers in his hair that he does something with his hands other than cling to the sheets like a virgin after prom. He holds Rich like he’s afraid he’ll disappear, his nails digging into Rich’s hip and scratching an itch he’s long learned to ignore.

Rich can’t help his moan when Jeremy bites his lip, but doesn’t open his mouth for him. Something about that would edge across the line they’re dancing on. Jeremy’s fingers trace slowly down his hips and hook in the waistband of his jeans, setting Rich alight.

They break apart, gasping for breath. Jeremy’s lips are bruised and slick as he pants, the thin red line of dawn cutting across his heaving chest. Rich slides his hand down Jeremy’s neck and fists the collar of his shirt, pulling him down. 

Rich whimpers as his back hits the mattress, the rough sheets scraping against his scars. Jeremy cringes and scrambles back, but Rich pulls him back in. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” Jeremy asks, hovering over him on his knees and hands.

“Quit wrinkling your brow at me like that. You look like a prune.” Rich lets go of his collar and smoothes his hand down Jeremy’s side, feeling the bumps of his ribs through the fabric. “Relax. Your dick’s not big enough to break me.”

Jeremy rolls his eyes and sits back on his haunches. Rich tries not to look too disappointed by the distance. “I literally just bandaged you up. Having sex usually doesn’t involve a trip to the emergency room.”

Rich grins and waggles his eyebrows. “Not if you’re having any fun.” 

“I’m not forging insurance papers again. Eventually they’ll stop believing that we’re related.” Jeremy says, tracing the edges of the scar dappling Rich’s side from the bottom of his ribs to the bones of his hips. He slides his fingers down to Rich’s fly, playing with the button. “Can I?”

Rich nods and grunts as Jeremy unzips him, fingers pressing against his bulge. He lifts his hips for Jeremy as he peels his jeans off him and tosses them aside. Rich watches them land in a heap on the bare hardwood.

Jeremy hums as he paws at Rich through his boxers. His hands are steady, cupping Rich’s balls and rubbing his thumb over the head. Rich curses under him as slick stains his boxers. “Fuck. The hell am I supposed to wear home?”

Jeremy shrugs. “Stay for laundry.”

He lets go of Rich’s cock and slides his boxers down around his thighs. The shock of cold morning air makes Rich gasp, and Jeremy just smiles like an asshole and licks his palm. 

“Wow, Jeremy,” Rich says, sighing longsufferingly as he bats away Jeremy’s slobbery hand. “Stripping me without even ditching the shirt. That’s fucking uncouth.” 

“Huh?”

“I’m a delicate soul,” Rich complains, shaking his hips. “This is just destroying my self esteem.” 

“Don’t you want to come?”

Rich shrugs. “I’m a sensitive and caring lover. I can pet your groin ferret first.”

Jeremy makes a face. “Seriously?”

“Strip.”

Jeremy swallows and slides off of him, hopping awkwardly on one foot as he pulls off his pants. Rich hardly has a moment to admire the line of his legs before Jeremy is back on him, bony ass digging into his thighs. 

Rich gives it an affectionate grope and groans as he rolls his hips. He glances down and fuck, he hadn’t realized Jeremy was that hard under that stupid mumu of a shirt. 

“Come on tallass, I don’t want Garfield staring at my dong. Lose the tee.”

Jeremy rolls his eyes.

“Do you really want to traumatize Michael by boinking in his shirt. He probably took that out of his memorabilia case and here you are, besmirching it with another man’s seed.”

“I will pay you to never say the word ‘seed’ ever again,” Jeremy grumbles and grinds against Rich to shut him up. Rich watches him hungrily as he pulls his shirt over his head and throws it to the ground. He shakes out his hair and stares at Rich like an actor waiting for a cue.

Rich reaches up and grabs Jeremy’s shoulder, pulling him down until their noses are nearly touching. He traces the line of his collar bone and slides his nails down his sternum, leaving faint lines across his skin. His fingers dig into Jeremy’s hips and he grins when he hears his breath hitch. He can see the wet spot on the where his cock’s pressed against the thin fabric of his underwear. 

He hooks his fingers in the waistband of Jeremy’s boxers and makes an impressed noise as he pulls them down around his thighs. “So tell me again why Christine isn’t riding your ass like, constantly?”

“Quit- fuck!” Jeremy’s face screws up as Rich swipes his thumb through the precome beading up on the head of his cock. “Quit trying to wingman when you’re jacking me off.”

“Jeremy, I’m a good person,” Rich says, sliding his hand lower to play with his balls. “It is my sovereign duty to share the wealth. I have the best interests of all my friends at heart.”

“How can you be this annoying  _ all the time? _ ” Jeremy’s arm shakes as he tries to keep from slipping on the loose sheets, twisting his fingers in them for purchase.

Rich pats his side encouragingly. “Natural talent.”

Jeremy gasps as Rich gets in a particularly good stroke, and pulls back, batting away Rich’s hand.

“You okay?” Rich asks, letting go. “Jer?”

Jeremy shakes his head and wipes his sweaty hair out of his face with his palm. He’s flushed from his ears all the way down to his shoulders and his eyes are more black than blue as he looks down at Rich, wanting. “You’re fine. I’m just close.”

“Yeah, so?” Rich reaches for Jeremy’s junk again and Jeremy slaps his hand. Rich huffs. “Look, I’ll think you’re kinda lame if you pass out immediately after, but I’m not really gonna care. I can get myself off perfectly fine. I’m a big boy.”

“That’s not the point,” Jeremy complains. Rich grabs his hip again and makes a pleased sound when Jeremy bucks his hips almost involuntarily. “Why would you have sex with someone if they didn’t make you come?”

Rich squints at Jeremy. “Is this an edging thing or some shit?”

“I have to get you off,” Jeremy says, jaw set, and grabs Rich’s arm, pushing him down into the mattress. Rich groans as Jeremy presses his lips to his neck, carefully avoiding the scrapes and scars. His thigh presses between Rich’s legs and Rich can’t help but rut against him. 

Jeremy’s way lighter than Jake was when they fell onto the couch with a bottle of Smirnoff between them, but the feeling of his fingers on his cock is the same. If he shuts his eyes and ignores the dawn creeping through the window, he can pretend for just a moment. 

Rich comes quick and all over Jeremy’s hand. Jeremy pulls back as Rich gasps for air but Rich grabs his wrist before he can make it awkward. “Your turn.”

Jeremy slowly nods and lets Rich pull him down again, reach his hand between them and work him until his breathing gets high and ragged. He pants into Rich’s shoulder as he bucks into his palm and Rich holds him until he comes and goes still. 

Rich sighs and stares up at the ugly ceiling under his dead weight. The long shadows cast by the rising sun makes the popcorn ceiling especially virulent. He traces a hand down Jeremy’s back, feeling where scars make his skin go scaly and smooth. “You good?”

Jeremy doesn’t move for a moment, then slowly nods. 

“Then can you get off me? This is pretty rank.”

Jeremy slides off, and grabs a handful of paper towels from the roll next to the bed. He cleans off in silence, his back to Rich. 

Rich pulls himself up, groaning, and tears off some for himself. He scrubs at his belly until he accepts defeat and the fact that no matter what he does, he’s going to be sticky and gross in the morning. He sighs and grabs the blanket from where they kicked it aside, blinking blearily at the sun rising through the window. The light poking through the clouds is crimson.

He drapes the blanket over the bed and pats the spot next to him. Jeremy doesn’t move.

“Dude.” He grabs Jeremy’s shoulder and shakes. “Jeremy?”

“I’m here.” Jeremy stands and grabs a hoodie off the floor. Rich sees a flash of red skin where he’d been scrubbing, and then it’s gone under the hem of the hoodie. He watches as Jeremy gets up and wriggles into a fresh pair of boxers. 

Rich inches over on the bed so there’s space and pats the spot next to him. Jeremy pads over in silence and clambers in, his weight making the mattress springs groan softly. Rich drapes an arm over his side and lets his mind wander.

“Shit,” Rich announces to the empty room. “We never bought the lamp. Dad’s gonna kill me.”

Jeremy tentatively takes his hand. Presses his body up against Rich’s. He can feel his racing heartbeat.

Jeremy doesn’t say anything for a long, long minute. “Michael’s trunk has enough space for all your stuff.”

Rich bites his lip. Jeremy runs his thumb over his knuckles and keeps going, keeps offering. “We could go tomorrow, on the way to Goodwill. Before your dad even comes home from work. You wouldn’t have to see him ever again.”

Rich looks around Jeremy’s room, the blank walls, the bare floor. All the spaces left empty, the burn holes left in Jeremy’s life that he’s asking him, trusting him, to help fill.

He could do that for him.

“Headphones better not wrinkle my fucking posters.”

Jeremy nods and sets his head on the pillow, accepting his victory. Rich buries his face in the warm crook of Jeremy’s neck, blocking out the red light pouring through their window and Jeremy’s shaking shoulders.

For once, he doesn’t dream.

**Author's Note:**

> "Red sky at night, sailors' delight.  
> Red sky at morning, sailors take warning."


End file.
